HP announced a new feature called "HP Velocity" that's now available in all their thin clients. Based on technology they licensed from LiveQoS (formerly called "iPeak,"), Velocity technology can reconstruct network packets that are lost or damaged in transit. (It's often described as "RAID for network packets.") Lost or damaged packets is something that happens more and more with crowded WiFi and public 3G and 4G networks, and even a few tenths of a percent of packet loss can negatively affect the user experience.

We've talked and argued about LiveQoS/iPeak quite a bit in the past, including at BriForum and on BrianMadden.com in an article I wrote two years ago. My general feeling was that I like the technology, but I thought, "ugg, now that's just one more thing I need to add to the stack!" But this HP deal changes that. They licensed the software version which they'll build into all of their client client and smart client firmware packages. Then there's also an agent that you install into your remote Windows VM. The licensing is handled by HP--it doesn't cost you anything and you can install the remote agent into as many VMs as you want. (It will automatically kick-in when it detects an HP thin client.)

Here's a video I shot of the HP Velocity in action. Note that I literally shot this myself--Justin was not with me--so I apologize for my amateurish handling of the camera.

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Was thinking about it a bit more. The total bandwidth of the network doesn't change so does this somehow make a client using this tech more of a bandwidth hog as the agent works to make up for the packet loss??

The idea behind LiveQoS is to trade bandwidth for quality on the connection. That means it does use more BW to correct the loss. But the reality is as you have the loss correct you cut down on the retransmissions so the BW is not being wasted like when no correction is in place so you are really not using that much more.

Of course the more loss you have, the more has to be sent upfront to the other end to get the correction.

Great solution and as Tom pointed out, no matter what other vendors say, loss is a real thing and unless you live in some sort of bubble, you face it on a daily basis without even knowing it was there.

I showed everyone at one of the BriForums the packet loss on the expo hall network was peaking at 15%. Funny thing was certain vendors were given a session at the same time using 0.1% as a reference for real world packet loss while outside their room realitywas showing a verydifferent number...